'The sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms,
provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and
dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your sex.' With this
opinion I perfectly coincide. A man, or a woman, of any feeling,
must always wish to convince a beloved object that it is the
caresses of the individual, not the sex, that are received and
returned with pleasure; and, that the heart, rather than the
senses, is moved. Without this natural delicacy, love becomes a
selfish personal gratification that soon degrades the
character.

I carry this sentiment still further. Affection, when love is out
of the question, authorises many personal endearments, that
naturally, flowing from an innocent heart, give life to the
behaviour; but the personal intercourse of appetite, gallantry,
or vanity, is despicable. When a man squeezes the hand of a
pretty woman, handing her to a carriage, whom he has never seen
before, she will consider such an impertinent freedom in the
light of an insult, if she have any true delicacy, instead of
being flattered by this unmeaning homage to beauty. These are the
privileges of friendship, or the momentary homage which the heart
pays to virtue, when it flashes suddenly on the notice -- mere
animal spirits have no claim to the kindnesses of affection!